Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 16/05/20268-bit computers could address 64K of RAM. 16-bit computers could address 1 MB of RAM. 32-bit computers could address 4 GB of RAM. A 64-bit computer can address 16,777,216 TB of RAM. 000
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 16/05/2026Light is a time machine -- literally everything you see has happened in the past, whether it's meters away, and femtoseconds in the past, or billions of light years away, and a corresponding number of years on the past. 0131
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 16/05/2026Male bees -- drones -- are born from unfertilized eggs. 040
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 20/04/2026I wonder if someone with pancreatic cancer would have standing to sue? 000
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 15/04/2026Not sure I'm buying, even though I'd love to. Black holes take a LONG time to evaporate -- but evaporate they will, and very much in finite time. And when they transition from a black hole back into the "real" universe, all their matter (or energy) will as well. 110
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 26/03/2026This administration despises objectivity, and will work ceaselessly to position narrative ahead of it and its agents. And if that means removing funding, all the better. *sigh* 130
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 19/12/2025"Left-wing judicial activism." Otherwise known as "a decision I disagree with and must try to undermine." 000
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 12/09/2025Sooooo... we should show how awesome we are by being as bad as them? Because that checks out. 000
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 18/06/2025Heyyyyyy... Star office was, like, the second office suite for Linux. I paid money for it -- and it was a huge step up. 010
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 16/06/2025Yeah, no. You are going at this the wrong way. Your problem isn't the cable, it's the media. Get an SSD in a USB 3.1 enclosure. Or get a high-quality USB drive -- like my PNY. I just wrote 30 GB at 157 MB/s, *with* dd's "oflag=direct" to avoid OS buffering. Plenty fast. 100
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 15/06/2025MacOS original flavor did not have a command line. MacOS current version is literally Unix, so that's not exactly news. Likewise, Windows pre-NT/2000/XP ran on top of DOS; in a sense, it was like Linux/Unix. Now, the CLI is embedded in the UI. 000
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 14/06/2025Bricked the keyboard?! Damnnnnn. And, yeah, I usually use more generic laptops: business Dell and Thinkpad models. If you've got a GPU, that's the thing to watch out for. Not too late to convert to dual boot! ;-) 110
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 13/06/2025It's amazing. And people *defend* his peacefully asking questions and then being handcuffed. "Have you heard of manners" was one I saw. The mind boggles. 100
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 12/06/2025There's a *reason* people make Linux suggestions: it has the ability to get down and dirty. From Windows, I have no idea how to wipe the very start of disk, which is what you need to do: the MBR and partition table, basically. Time for ChatGPT? Good luck. 100
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 12/06/2025* One thing that can slow a host, though less frequently in this age of SSD drives, is a spinning disk drive beginning to have media flaws. Do a dmesg | grep -i read and look for info about read errors. That's a sign the disk urgently needs to be backed up and replaced. 000
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 12/06/2025Zombie processes. You can't kill them; they are already dead. (No, really.) They are prevented from exiting due to the parent not reaping them properly. They aren't consuming resources other than an entry in the process table. Restart the parent process, and gone. They will never slow a system. 000
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 12/06/2025Solid article, but a couple things stand out. * OOM -- this refers to the Out of Memory process killer, a kernel hueristic used by the kernel when memory pressure is tight. If a process is no longer running, you can check to see if it was killed by OOM: dmesg | grep -i oom 000
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 21/04/2025LOL. I would need to bump those numbers -- 35 and 30 -- but otherwise that serves as boilerplate for my position as well. 010
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 20/04/2025If you say so. I'd be very interested to hear which packages broke. Because, as someone who is Debian on my servers, Ubuntu on a single (ARM) laptop and my RasPi, and Mint for everything else, I haven't had a breaking update in a decade(?) -- back when they didn't have good upgrade paths. 100
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 18/04/2025In legalese, that's called "a righteous bitchslap." Just sayin'. 050
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 25/03/2025Seriously. I live NH, helped out as a worker bee for his 2020 run, and have followed him ever since, and while I'm sure he swears in private, I have never seen him do so in any public forum until now. Dayamn. 0130
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 14/03/2025I've decided to create a portmanteau of "dear leader" and "leopard are my face:" "dear leopard are my face." Or just "dear leopard" for short. 000
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 07/03/2025Marry me. I mean, my wife might object, but that was brilliant. 040
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 31/01/202522.04 is LTS; while desktop may not be directly supported after April, server is for another two years. I'd stick with desktop and call it good. 100
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 25/01/2025Patience. Start with Mint -- it's the one most likely to have all your drivers, and it's solid and easy to use. Expect hiccups; take satisfaction in figuring things out. Also, and I say this as someone who used Linux exclusively, if you're primarily interested in gaming, stick with Windows. 020
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 25/01/2025Get the minimal/net boot image of Debian, and you're pretty close, IIRC. 000
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 25/01/2025Feel free to ping me with any questions. (30-year Linux admin.) 110
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 24/01/2025If I understand you correctly, yes. This assumes your desktop isn't doing the streaming to which you refer. 010
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 24/01/2025This also includes things you don't own, but use: Amazon, Google, eBay, PayPal; basically, the substantial majority of online services run on Linux computers. The one place, really, that Linux *doesn't* reign supreme is the desktop. 020
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 24/01/2025Sorry for my delay in replying -- it's been a busy week and I just now saw your post. Yes, your TV, your Fire stick, your e-reader, your Android phone, your smart refrigerator -- the list goes on, and all are likely to be Linux of one stripe or another. 010
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 16/01/2025AI is why I ditched Google Pixel phones.and went to Moto. I'm not a complete Luddite -- I still want apps, etc. -- but Lord, I don't need them trying to force me to embrace my phone making decisions for me. 010
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 16/01/2025One of the fun things about Linux -- to steal a line from Palmolive -- is that "you're soaking in it now." (Does that make me old?) You are very likely using it in *something* in your place: router, microwave, TV, *something*. A lot just depends on how close to the metal you want to be. 110
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 15/01/2025Linux screensavers FTW: xscreensaver + xlockmore= ALL TEH SCREENSAVERS (of note). 010
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 08/01/2025Huh. The only time I experienced that was on Ubuntu with the snap package. It's part of the reason I moved to Mint. 110
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 30/12/2024It's as if Calvin and Susie retroactively had a kid. 040
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 29/12/2024Uh. No. There was *plenty* of software running in 2000 based on FORTRAN and COBOL. It was the fact that a decade of intensive patching had preceded 2000 that it was patched. As for Y2.038k, pretty much all business systems are 64-bit and thus immune; it's 32-bit embedded space to worry about. 010
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 27/12/2024I like GNOME terminal well enough, but I dislike some of its choices, and feel that xfce4-terminal did it right. Basically look the same, but better decisions about making larger, etc. 000
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 19/12/2024dd if=/dev/old disk of=/dev/newdisk status=progress BE SURE YOU HAVE YOUR DEVICES RIGHT. Note that you should be doing this from boot media; when the copy has finished, run gparted and expand the partition to fill the new disk. If you are unsure of device names, ASK FIRST. Happy to help.right.om 100
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 18/12/2024I looooooove Linux, I do, but most people use what their system came with. And that's why they use Windows. It's like chemistry: making a state/phase transition is much, much more "expensive" than puttering around where you already are. 000
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 18/12/2024That's win-win! (I have an old SparcStation IPC that I used as a monitor stand... until I got a 43" and such things were no longer needed.) 100
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 18/12/2024Good luck! It can have its ups and downs, especially based on what you're trying to accomplish. Feel free to ping me if you have problems or questions,.and I'll do my best to help. 110
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 17/12/2024YES. Rsync is the only command I can think of where trailing slashes _matter_. 000
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 17/12/2024Having spent AN ENTIRE DAY figuring out TWO freaking SSL commands, yes. This. 010
Ken D'Ambrosio @ravenpi.bsky.social · 17/12/2024I do -exec all the time -- so handy! -- so I have it down cold. Now the *rest* of find? Not so much. I just moosh it through grep or Ruby and do my mangling there. 000
